Several laboratory studies have show that student’s understanding of arithmetic could be enhanced through games involving numerical content. Thus, could encouraging students to play such games over the summer be enough to improve their achievement when they return to school ? In collaboration with the French Federation of Bridge, thousands of children in their first year of primary school (CP) received, right before the summer holidays, a card game called « Le petit bridge » and a board game called « Lianes et cascades ». A hundred voluntary schools, all located in priority education areas (REP/REP+) in 4 highly disadvantaged departments (Guadeloupe, Nord, Pas de Calais and La Réunion) were randomly assigned either to the experimental schools’ group (receiving the games) or to the control schools’ group (without the games). Students in the intervention schools received the games during the final week of CP (at the end of June 2021) and could play briefly in class before going home with the games. At the end of the holidays, at the beginning of their second year of primary school (CE1), their progress was assessed using the national evaluations (the Evalaide program) and a survey.
Results have shown that :
- Students who received the games reported greater confidence in their abilities in both mathematics and reading
- Many reported playing the games daily or weekly, particularly those who had initially performed least well in mathematics and language.
- However, on average, pupils who received the games did not outperform pupils in the control group after the summer break, either in mathematics or in language skills. Nor did they display higher levels of school motivation or lower levels of anxiety.
- Several factors may account for this limited impact. One possible explanation is the limited amount of time available before the school holidays to teach sophisticated games. Consequently, it seems likely that those stronger effects might be obtained by integrating the games into classroom activities throughout the school year, within a structured educational approach that teaches not only the rules of the games but also the mathematical concepts and forms of reasoning on which they are based. Such an initiative, known as the « Oiseaux compteurs » is currently under way.
This study highlights the importance of rigorous experimentation, even when the results are negative. Without such evidence, it might have been tempting to distribute games to all students, and the ineffectiveness of the intervention would likely have remained unnoticed.
